Z-Axis Marvels at Future

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Former Dave Mirra developer quietly in development with Iron Man, X-Men 3.

By Douglass C. Perry

Two years after Southern California publisher Activision bought Z-Axis, the development house behind the popular Dave Mirra BMX series and the innovative Aggressive Inline, gamers haven't heard a word from the once-prolific team.

IGN learned from a source close to Z-Axis that the small but growing developer is alive and mostly well. It's currently in progress developing X-Men 3, an action-adventure game based on the third movie in the series, and a character-driven action game based on Marvel's Iron Man license.

Though Activision hasn't officially announced X-Men 3 yet, both games are tentatively scheduled for release in 2006. Several members from the X-Men team are currently working in conjunction with Luxoflux, which is packing in so much content to the sequel to True Crime: Streets of LA that several Z-Axis members were required to help complete it. True Crime 2 is unofficially scheduled for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube this fall and should be revealed at E3.

One of the reasons nobody has heard from Z-Axis over the last 24 months is that its two unannounced projects were cancelled. Apparently, one of the games was a new IP that didn't turn out, and the other was a game based on xXx, the Vin Deisel movie that sucked eggs so badly Activision decided to cancel the game without ever showing a single screenshot of it.

In somewhat related news, Z-Axis President and Founder David Lutz plans to leave his homegrown development studios due to differences in opinion with owner Activision over the studio's growth and focus. The differences boil down to Lutz wanting to stay small and family oriented, and Activision desiring to grow the Z-Axis team into two and perhaps more teams, while using it as a recruiting base for Northern California talent, neither of which Lutz shared interest in doing. Former Electronic Arts Partners executive Craig Alexander currently runs Z-Axis studios.

Will we hear from Z-Axis any time soon? As soon as Activision is ready to share news on X-Men 3 and Iron Man, we'll be there to report.